Where Cooper was great was in the story, in the invention of incidents and plots, in a power of narrative and description in tales of wild adventure which keeps the reader in breathless excitement to the end of the book.  He originated the novel of the sea and the novel of the wilderness.  He created the Indian of literature; and in this, his peculiar field, although he has had countless imitators, he has had no equals.  Cooper’s experiences had prepared him well for the kingship of this new realm in the world of fiction.  His childhood was passed on the borders of Otsego Lake, when central New York was still a wilderness, with boundless forests stretching westward, broken only here and there by the clearings of the pioneers.  He was taken from college (Yale) when still a lad, and sent to sea in a merchant vessel, before the mast.  Afterward he entered the navy and did duty on the high seas and upon Lake Ontario, then surrounded by virgin forests.  He married and resigned his commission in 1811, just before the outbreak of the war with England, so that he missed the opportunity of seeing active service in any of those engagements on the ocean and our great lakes which were so glorious to American arms.  But he always retained an active interest in naval affairs.

His first successful novel was The Spy, 1821, a tale of the Revolutionary War, the scene of which was laid in Westchester County, N. Y., where the author was then residing.  The hero of this story, Harvey Birch, was one of the most skillfully drawn figures on his canvas.  In 1833 he published the Pioneers, a work somewhat overladen with description, in which he drew for material upon his boyish recollections of frontier life at Cooperstown.  This was the first of the series of five romances known as the Leatherstocking Tales.  The others were the Last of the Mohicans, 1826; the Prairie, 1827; the Pathfinder, 1840; and the Deerslayer, 1841.  The hero of this series, Natty Bumpo, or “Leatherstocking,” was Cooper’s one great creation in the sphere of character, his most original addition to the literature of the world in the way of a new human type.  This backwoods philosopher—­to the conception of whom the historic exploits of Daniel Boone perhaps supplied some hints; unschooled, but moved by noble impulses and a natural sense of piety and justice; passionately attached to the wilderness, and following its westering edge even unto the prairies—­this man of the woods was the first real American in fiction.  Hardly less individual and vital were the various types of Indian character, in Chingachgook, Uncas, Hist, and the Huron warriors.  Inferior to these, but still vigorously though somewhat roughly drawn, were the waifs and strays of civilization, whom duty, or the hope of gain, or the love of adventure, or the outlawry of crime had driven to the wilderness—­the solitary trapper, the reckless young frontiersman, the officers and men of out-post garrisons.  Whether Cooper’s Indian was the real being, or an idealized and rather melodramatic version of the truth, has been a subject of dispute.  However this be, he has taken his place in the domain of art, and it is safe to say that his standing there is secure.  No boy will ever give him up.